แหล่งเรียนรู้เรื่อง Reported Speech

* doesn't change.

Occasionally, we don't need to change the present tense into the past if the information in direct speech is still true (but this is only for things which are general facts, and even then usually we like to change the tense):

• • Direct speech: The sky is blue.

  • Reported speech: She said (that) the sky is/was blue.

• Reported Questions

So now you have no problem with making reported speech from positive and negative sentences. But how about questions?

• • Direct speech: Where do you live?

How can we make the reported speech here?

In fact, it's not so different from reported statements. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the question word. The very important thing though is that, once we tell the question to someone else, it isn't a question any more. So we need to change the grammar to a normal positive sentence. A bit confusing? Maybe this example will help:

• • Direct speech: Where do you live?

  • Reported speech: She asked me where I lived.

Do you see how I made it? The direct question is in the present simple tense. We make a present simple question with 'do' or 'does' so I need to take that away. Then I need to change the verb to the past simple.

Another example:

• • Direct speech: Where is Julie?

  • Reported speech: She asked me where Julie was.

The direct question is the present simple of 'be'. We make the question form of the present simple of be by inverting (changing the position of)the subject and verb. So, we need to change them back before putting the verb into the past simple.

Here are some more examples:

So much for 'wh' questions. But, what if you need to report a 'yes / no' question? We don't have any question words to help us. Instead, we use 'if':

• • Direct speech: Do you like chocolate?

  • Reported speech: She asked me if I liked chocolate.

No problem? Here are a few more examples: